June Playlist at Baohaus

We are going to have bi-monthly playlists at Baohaus and Xiao Ye. I made this first one and it's on at baohaus this week. If you wanna get down, hit us with your playlist and we'll check it out! Its gonna be a hot mother fuckin summer. I'm glad that people dropped heat rocks the last week cause I've been upset hearin' that its the summer of Drake. BUT, lookin at his singles and what every one else came with, I think that kid is gonna disappoint. As funny as it is to say, I think Banks set it off a couple months ago with Bimmer, Benz, Bentley, then Joell had Nissan, Honda, Chevy... Fat Joe had HAHA, then Young Jeezy really laid it down with Lose My Mind. I'm at bonchon friday night and boom, T.I. drops a mixtape. COOKIES! But before I even finish listenin to that KAN-mofuckin-YEEZY comes with Power and shut it down. Throw in MIA's lil diss track and I'm ready to hotbox baohaus with Asa this weekend haha.

With the list its a lil old, a lil new, and somethin for kids haha. We're not really tryin to break records and shit so its not meant to have all the new shit... More like playlists for a house party. As you'll see, i like to hear songs back to back from same artist..

Baohaus June - Eddie's List

1) Black Keys - Strange Times

2) Black Moon - I Got Cha Opin

3) Black moon - Shit Iz Real

4) Consequence - The GOod, The Bad, The Ugly

5) Cool Kids - Gold and a Pager

6) Cool Kids - 88

7) Danger Doom - Sofa King

8) Danger Doom - Space Ho's

9) Danger Mouse ft. Jemini - Ghetto Pop Life

10) Gwen Stefani - Luxurious

11) Gucci Mane - Lemonade

12) Kanye - Power

13) Big Boi - Shutterbug

14) Chromeo - Destination Overdrive

15) Chromeo - You're So Gangsta

16) Diplo - Put That Pussy On Me

17) Birdman - Stuntin Like My Daddy

18) Diplomats - Dipset Anthem

19) Diplomats - This is What I Do

20) Gucci Mane ft. Cam'ron - Stupid Wild

21) Banks, Juelz, FABO - Bimmer, Benz or Bentley

22) Fabolous - Brooklyn

23) Fat Joe - Ha Ha

24) Fat Joe - Lean Back 

25) Ghostface - The Champ

26) Ghostface - Tony Sigel

27) Jay-Z - Hello Brooklyn

28) Jay-Z - Success

29) Black Keys - I Got Mine

30) MF Doom - Rhymes Like Dimes

31) Mobb Deep - Drink Away the Pain

32) Nas - Affirmative Action

33) Nas - Street Dreams

34) Joell Ortiz - Brooklyn Ghetto Child

35) Kanye - Diamonds 

26) Lupe - Hip Hop Saved My Life

27) Lupe - Paris, Tokyo

28) MIA ft. Wale - Boyz

29) Dipset - Get Em Girls

30) TI - Big Shit Poppin

31) TI - You Know What it is

32) Jeezy - Crazy World

33) Jeezy - Vacation

34) Jeezy - Lose My Mind

35) R. Kelly - Ignition (for the kids)

Employee of Last Month

POW! and we back a month late. Now i know what its like to miss a period. I forgot to do employee of the month last month, but i'm makin up for it now. Vic came to baohaus from our ad looking for people who were WEB Dubois meets Heavy D and the boys (thanks dice raw). Not since Kate did we get a cover letter like Vic's:

To My Future Employers:

  

  I am a City College student  studying film, who at this moment is slacking off from school "trying to find myself". I am a huge dork, but I have a mean right hook.  Not only do I wish that I could birth Questlove's babies (that man is GENIUS), I wish I had could have the Roots follow me around and just play live music for me all day. I'm Cuban and Jordanian, so all your food is the equivalent of a wet dream. I'm also a mean baker (Purple Rain Shortcakes, with chocolate sauce. Just think about it.) and I dug your take on Twinkies. I plan on hosting my own slacker cooking show. Even though I have mentioned the word 'slacker"  I am hard worker and  terribly reliable, and I'm always on time. Plus, I have experience in food service, so I can handle all the rowdy customers without catching a case. I split my time between Harlem and the Bronx, but i would definitely relocate, if I got this job.

 

Hope to hear from you soon!

 

-Victoria

BOSS! That is how you mother fucking write a cover letter. Victoria, you the employee of last month. Pour some Apple Sidra out fo yoself or we can go get bluies at Apollo.

Chillin out.....

Afghan goo-goo just aint gettin it done these days. I need to chill but the heat got me buggin... Some people go to Church, but I go to Shopsin's... Recently, I've just had a lot of difficulty not responding to people who leave anonymous comments whether its on my blog, on yelp, etc. I don't get it. If you're going to say something, put your name on it. I do!

Kenny gave me some good advice that went something like this: "Go for the pussy, stop messin with the tits." LOL. He's been around a lot longer than me and he always has good advice. I do feel like I got drawn into a lot of sideshow shit like being blocked by an choi, haters on yelp, chairman bao, etc. And, at least for the short term, I'm going to do my best to ignore this shit and focus on my food. For anyone else looking to open a restaurant, I would say just be ready for negative things that you yourself didn't even seek out. The shit just finds you, but its cool. I aint mad. I'm gonna chill out and just have fun cooking. The recipes for xiao ye are all done, gonna cook for my homies before game 1 of the finals tomorrow so I'll have some photos of that.

I think a lot of people have the wrong perception about us. We're all just kids and a lot of the times, we are immature. I wake up, play ball, eat and then head in to check the restaurant. After that, who knows what happens. We don't know how to handle everything that's been going on so we just say what we think and it hasn't always been good for us. I'm 28, Emery's 25, Evan's 22, there isn't a class or book or person who can tell you how to do this nor would we want that. We like to figure this out ourselves, but I think we forget that everything on the internet is there for people to see. We're really just being ourselves writing funny menus, doing goofy promotions, but people see it as some premeditated ploy. I wish people would get to know us and see that we're really just a random family. I mean, I'm an accident baby. The Huangs don't really plan shit. So... for the time being, i'm going to chill and if yall want to help, just remind me of this post haha.

That said... we're goin back to cali




Props to Raf aka The Prince of BK for planning this trip to Cali..... For the record, its not a throwdown. I'm just gonna cook. If you like pork, come see me.

Corporate Food Trucks

The SF Weekly had a great article last week. Somehow, I missed it but I just read it. I hope that people can see my beef with Mobi Munch is bigger than Baohaus or Chairman Bao or the Chairman Bao Truck. This blog isn't meant to promote baohaus, it was started as a resource to talk about starting a restaurant and now running one. So, with that in mind, I'm not going to bore you guys with what we plan to do concerning the violation of our chairman bao mark.

I do want to talk about the larger issue though concerning Corporate Street Food. I felt SF Weekly laid out both sides VERY well. These guys are applebees, PF Chang's, etc. "vets". Need I say more? They see a market to expose and they have a business model to efficiently pair people with trucks for their particular market. They are completely deteriorating the independent, creative, and spontaneous aspects of food trucks. The whole scheme is very pre-meditated and formulaic. Perhaps you just don't care and want pork buns in your neighborhood, but I still feel there needs to be some integrity and a personal touch.

As much as I hate "foodies", there has really been a "revolution" of sorts concerning food in America. From gastropubs (thanks spotted pig) to pork buns to stinky tofu, the last ten years have been great for American culinary history. Never in my life did I think I could sit back, hit my roor, and watch Andrew Zimmern eat Taiwanese food at Shilin. It's great. BUT, supporting these corporate food trucks and franchising the last 10 years of culinary creativity, plateaus our growth. This is what I mean.... There's PLENTY more work to do. New York could use some more food from Singapore or Peru or even tackling the challenge of evolving New York cuisine. What is it? I dunno, but it interests me. We're not done and we can still do better! Now is not the time to spend our dollars on watered down concepts. By supporting these things, our dollars are tied up in vanilla market offerings that don't progress food culture in America.

I mean, even in our family, we plan to do one more by the end of 2010. We got ideas! A whole new concept. Who knows, maybe after that, I'll work on expanding and taking the concepts to new locales, but if I did, I would tweak the menu to fit local flavors, tastes, and culinary history. Each spot would have something new. I don't think expansion is a bad thing, but you have to always push yourself to be genuine and original. At least that's how I feel. Its great to share your work with more people, I love that part of my job. But, I try to give people different looks. For instance, at hester st. fair, we served Kim Jong's ILL Noodles. The first day, we used Mama O's Kimchi made from cabbage. The second day, we used Skim Kim made of cucumbers. It was done intentionally so that I would stay entertained and people would have a reason to come back. You can do business several ways. One way is to target markets, see what the market needs and package it in the most efficient way possible. Which is what I think Mobi Truck is doing.

When efficiency and profits are the primary goals though, you sacrifice quality and I think craft. Food is art. I strongly believe that. Its just edible art. If you want a definition of art, read Tolstoy, but I'm not getting into it here. The point is, we need to respect our craft. That doesn't mean table cloths, garnish, or a star system, but I do think it has something to do with integrity, originality, and honesty. Mobi Truck... if you think your product has those three things, I'll shut the fuck up. But, from where I'm sitting, I can't see it. I would love to be proven wrong though.......

Lastly, thanks to Stuartvision for the truck!!! He made me a toy truck with baohaus and xiao ye stuff from the blog all over it! The bottom is the Chairman Bao Truck run over haha.